Page 816 - les-miserables

spoke with you, but did not look at you and never smiled
at you.
The light which came from behind you was adjusted in
such a manner that you saw her in the white, and she saw
you in the black. This light was symbolical.
Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that
opening which was made in that place shut off from all
glances. A profound vagueness enveloped that form clad in
mourning. Your eyes searched that vagueness, and sought
to make out the surroundings of the apparition. At the expi-
ration of a very short time you discovered that you could see
nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a
wintry mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of
terrible peace, a silence from which you could gather noth-
ing, not even sighs, a gloom in which you could distinguish
nothing, not even phantoms.
What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.
It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice
which was called the Convent of the Bernardines of the
Perpetual Adoration. The box in which you stood was the
parlor. The first voice which had addressed you was that of
the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the
other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by
the iron grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by
a double visor. The obscurity which bathed the grated box
arose from the fact that the parlor, which had a window on
the side of the world, had none on the side of the convent.
Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred place.
Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow;

816 Les Miserables